Noa Deane On The Electric Acid Surfboard Test’s Panda Shiitake Twinzer

There is a certain joy Stab takes in selecting and inviting each year’s shapers to projects like Stab In The Dark and The Electric Acid Surfboard Test. The opportunity to shine some light on alt. board design’s icons and upstarts alike, and watch our favorite surfers ride their boards, is unique.  

This year’s Acid Test with Noa Deane included a handful of new faces to the project, and among them was one of Stab‘s favorites, Panda Surfboards Blake Peters—the Australian-born, OC-based builder of thoughtfully progressive, unorthodox equipment for surfers like Brendon Gibbens, Shane Borland, and Robbie Rickard, among others. 

Given Blake’s careful attention to surfing’s current avante-garde, we got the sense he was onto who our test pilot was this year, and submitted what might have been the most surprising board of the quiver, a stretched-out swallow-tail twinzer that Blake had been calling the Shiitake. 

The Shiitake is a truly unique concept board, Peters’ take on the classic San Diego four-fin, forward-trailer design, with a curvy, dramatic outline begging for long, drawn-out surfing on open faces. 

Which is not, exactly, what Noa did. As we learned quickly filming EAST with Mr. Deane, he’s fairly uncompromising in his approach, and took great joy in pushing the Shiitake well beyond its previous limits at Rocky Rights. 

Designed to be ridden between 6’0 and 7’0, Blake compensated for Noa’s penchant for short, more radical equipment, and has refined the design even further since the film. 

According to Peters, the Shiitake came about “ from wanting to ride some longer boards and still keep some performance built into them and also wanting a shape bigger guys could also use and rip on. The Shiitake is flat enough in the front to get a good amount of glide while paddling combined with a healthy amount of concaved vee running out the tail to allow this board to stay very manoverable. The Shiitake will excel best in waves from shoulder high plus.”

While we dig the rare novelty of the Twinzer, the Shiitake is also avalable as a twin, quad, and thruster. Pick your poison.